A Kiss is Still a Kiss
by runaway scrape
Summary: Mal and Inara are held hostage in an attempt to get at River. Will they escape successfully or end up killing one another? Flashbacks from Inara's past. Rating for sexual references and cursing.
1. Part 1

**Chapter 1**

"Inara? Come on, honey, wake up."

She was limp as a boiled noodle, and the bruise on her jaw gave evidence why. Mal gently brushed her hair away from her face and looked around the room. For a prison cell, it was quite nice – all the comforts of home, really. He crossed over to the refrigeration unit and dug out several ice cubes and a towel to wrap them around. When Inara finally came to, she'd appreciate an ice pack for her jaw.

They were in quite a pickle. Morado had played them perfectly off one another and used the crew's greatest asset, their loyalty to one another, to get them exactly where he wanted them. He sighed and checked his chronometer. By now, Serenity should have just reached Persephone. That meant they had two or three days left. After that . . . well, it wasn't exaggerating to say he didn't expect to get out of this one alive. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the coverlet over Inara. Something on the fingertips of her right hand drew his attention. Blood. She had clawed whoever'd grabbed her but good. It was hard to imagine a Companion going for blood like that, but Inara was always full of surprises. Using the towel, he gently wiped most of the blood away. Wouldn't do at all to let it stain her dress.

"A simple proposition, Captain Reynolds," Morado said, his attention fully on Mal's face while an underling waited behind his elbow, quivering with unfinished tasks. "The cargo is not contraband, the bills of lading are quite in order, and the time frame I'm requesting, while short, is nothing outside of your ship's scope."

Mal's eyes flicked over to Zoe, and he read in her stance the same wariness he felt. Something just wasn't kosher.

"It's a generous offer, Obermeister, but I'm a little confused is all. You know our reputation and where our business generally takes us. There are a score of other ships that could carry your cargo faster 'n' cheaper. Why us?"

Morado's eyes crinkled in a slight, genuine smile. "Let's just say that I'd like to avoid any Alliance entanglements. For reasons of my own. You come recommended as someone who prefers to avoid their attention as well, and your record speaks for itself. Do we have a deal?"

It was quite a deal: fifty percent up front, fifty percent on delivery. The cargo didn't even take up that much room. He would have an extra day to find more cargo or passengers and a contact that would take him the quick way round customs on Elysium, the second moon of Persephone. He could make a killing, a killing that would almost make up for the loss of Inara's shuttle rental. That was just the trouble. It was a little too good. But for the life of him, he couldn't put his finger on what Morado was after – other than a quiet ride for his crates of what-have-you.

He glanced at Zoe again, and she gave a barely perceptible shrug. Well, if need be, they could always crack open the cases and find out what he was really carrying.

"It's a deal," Mal answered, sticking his hand out. Obermeister Morado gave it a squeeze and a pump with his own hand, firm, but not threatening. The man knew how to shake hands.

"The cargo will be delivered to you tomorrow morning by nine o'clock, standard. I expect to receive notification of its arrival at Elysium in two weeks."

Inara stirred just slightly. If he hadn't been holding her hand and studying her face, he would have missed it. Her eyes had fluttered just the tiniest bit and then stopped. She was awake, he had no doubt. She was also pretending to still be unconscious, just in case.

"It's all right, Inara. We're safe. For the time being, that is," he said in a normal tone of voice.

Her eyelids popped open immediately, and she scanned his face, but the tiny worry wrinkle between her brows did not smooth away. 

"Mal, where a-" she started to sit up, and before she was halfway there, she groaned, putting a hand to the side of her jaw where she'd taken at least one ham-sized fist.

"This'll help," he offered her the ice filled towel, and she accepted gratefully. "My guess," he continued, as he gently pulled her into a sitting position, "is that we're somewhere in the asteroid belt past Buggered. Scuse me, Beauregard."

"But . . ." her voice drifted off as she looked around the room. Under normal circumstances, any lodging that far out in the border worlds, and in an asteroid belt instead of planetside, would mean either the interior of the Serenity or a rock hopper's trundlebug. The tapestried walls, built in appliances, and small dimensions of their room were nothing like Serenity and far more luxurious than any rock hopper ever saw.

"You've been out for more'n a few hours," he resumed. "I've looked over as much of this gorram place as I could in that time. Far as I can tell, it's completely self-contained. There are enough rations to keep us here for months. There's also no way to send communication. My guess is that there isn't even a transponder on this little tub. Morado's got another way of getting here."

Inara looked around, letting the meaning of Mal's search sink in. In an age of interstellar travel, it was all too easy to start thinking that you could get from planet to moon to starbase with a hop and skip. You stopped thinking about how big space really was. One tiny module circling a G class star in the middle of an asteroid belt wouldn't be found even if the entire Alliance was looking for it. That's why these spots were so popular with smugglers. You might almost say they'd fallen off the face of the verse.

"What now?" Inara asked. She was starting to shiver. Mal absentmindedly handed her the coverlet.

"Not much good either way. Morado will only keep us alive so long as he's got a reason. That reason's River. Either she's found, and he wins, so he kills us, or she gets away with the crew, he loses, so he kills us. There's not much reason for him to be keepin' us alive."

Even though her breath escaped in a slow sigh, Inara remained unbowed. A Companion, after all, never let circumstances affect her posture.

"In the act of love, a Companion must never, ever, lose control over herself," the instructor stated. "The point is not your climax, it is the climax of your client. Allow yourself the luxury of climaxing, and you lose the focus that allows you to meet your client's every need."

Inara tilted her head just slightly to the right. There was no need to raise a hand or even a finger to indicate she had a question. Their instructor was so well versed in reading clients and others that she could tell who had a question before that person had even framed it in her mind. The instructor lowered her chin infinitesimally, granting permission to ask.

"What if your client wishes to bring you to climax?"

"It is not the conflict of interests it might appear. Many men feel it is a sign of their sexual prowess to bring any partner they share a bed with to climax. Many more feel it is as important that their partner climax as that they do. Give them the appearance of climaxing, and you meet their needs as well as your own."

Startlement passed over the small group. After all, one of their first lessons in pillow work had been that scrupulous honesty is the basis of a satisfying encounter.

The instructor's lips tugged up in the slightest indulgent smile. "The client need not know exactly what is going through your head at any one time. Indeed, it is in the client's best interest that he or she not know. After all, you practice serenity with a client even when you've received news that your mother has died, your father has been imprisoned, and your brother killed. You are not Companions in order to impose your own emotional experiences on your client. You are Companions in order to bring beauty and grace to your client's time with you."

River stood on the railings above the cargo deck, studying the pallet of crates brought on board at Sierra. She decided that she didn't like those boxes. She would have avoided them like…well, like the plague, but the size of the ship made that difficult. Even when it was nighttime on the ship and everyone else was asleep, dreaming quiet table and chair dreams, the boxes made noise. She hadn't been able to puzzle out exactly what the noise was, but it was enough to keep her awake.

"Honey?" Kaylee called. "Will you come down from there? Pretty please?"

River glanced back at Kaylee, who was trying so hard not to act worried, because that just bothered River more. It wasn't as if climbing up on the railings and leaning way out over the empty space was all that dangerous. She calculated mass, momentum, vector, gravity, and the force with which she'd land on the cargo deck if she decided to leap out from the catwalk in a mistaken attempt to fly. Friction would be minimal, but at the very least there would be broken, mangled bones. She calculated just how much force would be required to create a disabling fracture of the tibia, then how much to cause a compact fracture. Both numbers were within her capabilities, given a little leverage.

"You can have my strawberry," Kaylee offered.

River peeked back over her shoulder at the berry Kaylee held out. _It's nice and shiny was what Kaylee's brain said. It was jealous that Kaylee would give her the strawberry, not it. The smell of it wafted up and started singing in her nose and mouth, though the strawberry itself said nothing. Did strawberries feel sad or happy when they were eaten? Happy, River decided, though if they learned what became of their masticated, digested seeds in Serenity's reclamation system, they might not be so happy anymore. Best not to tell them, really._

With the strawberry fragrance singing so loudly and the noise the boxes below were making, as River reached for the strawberry, she forgot to calculate how her center of gravity shifted, and that the new gravitational vector would overcome the friction of the guy wire against the sole of her foot. She slipped, the arguing increased, and a strong hand clamped over her arm, pulling her back in. It was joined by another equally strong hand, and she was lifted off the catwalk and back down to the main walkway.

"Thank you, Jayne," Kaylee breathed in relief.

_Crazy kid, and I have to look after her. Anything happens to her, and the captain'll [fry my testicles up and serve them for breakfast] was what Jayne's brain said, but he only grunted, threw an annoyed leer at Kaylee and continued his way down towards the galley. River began eating her promised strawberry, listening to it smile in happiness that its seeds would find a warm, fertile home to sprout from after their passage through her gastrointestinal tract. Oh, there was something she needed to tell Kaylee, to tell the captain. Remembering it was difficult, since Kaylee was talking to her, and her words floated down to the cargo bay like flowers shed from a tree in bloom. They were too far away from River to catch their meaning. Perhaps she ought to have Simon check her eyes. She might be getting near-sighted._

"Boxes," she told Kaylee.

The almond blossoms that fell from Kaylee's lips probably meant "what about boxes, sweetie?"

"The boxes don't mean well. I think they're Trojans. You should tell the captain."


	2. Part 2

**Chapter Two**

"I'm sorry I got you into this, Mal," Inara said quietly, slowly rubbing her hands together. As soon as she was up, she'd found a nail kit in the refresher and finished cleaning them out. They were now as clean, sharp, and elegant as if she were going to an embassy dance.

"Didn't exactly have a choice, did you?" he replied, rubbing his chin where the stubble was beginning to show. "You find out one of your client's buddies has plans on our River, not much else you can do."

"I wasn't certain. I could have told the authorities."

"Right, and then the Alliance digs through Morado's stuff, finds out that he knows River is on Serenity, and comes straight for us, and there's no way we can hide Simon and River quick enough. You did the right thing."

She turned her face away from his, all too aware that the right thing was probably going to get them both killed.

"What's up, Wash?" Mal asked as he clambored into the bridge.

"Communication for you, Cap, from Inara," Wash answered, for once the soul of deadpan discretion.

Mal paused, not quite baffled, but not far from it either. "I'll … uh, I'll take it in my quarters."

He climbed back through the hatch to the causeway and started down the ladder to his quarters. Inara's exit from Serenity had been hard on everyone. The sun of Kaylee's mood had been hidden behind a bank of gray clouds for more than a week. Book had been even quieter and more profound than usual. Even Jayne snarled a bit more and smiled a bit less, and Inara had been far from his favorite person. It had been nearly a month, and they were only just starting to regain their equilibrium.

Once in his quarters, he sat down at the desk in front of his console and flipped the vid switch. After some initial static, Inara's lovely face coalesced. Maybe he'd gotten better at reading people, but her smile seemed a little strained, and her gracious welcome was a little off pitch.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Mal, but I came across something I needed to talk to you about."

"The security deposit you put on the shuttle was wired to your account last week. Any difficulties with it?" he asked.

"Not at all." Again, her smile was not quite what it should have been. "It's just … I've heard something in the course of my work."

"Oh, the whoring?" He could have kicked himself the moment it came out of his mouth. Where another woman would have flinched or teared up or snarled in anger, there was only a moment's pause from Inara. Somewhere behind that carven ivory façade, she decided to set aside his words without comment or comeback. Whatever it was, then, it was important.

"One of my clients began to talk after he'd had a bit much to drink. He's been trying to convince me to take an exclusive contract with him, so I suspect he was trying to impress me. A colleague of his, who wasn't named, is in the process of acquiring a very valuable tool – one that can read minds, enter buildings without being seen, act as the perfect spy or even the perfect assassin."

The wheels in his head spun for a moment before the cogs caught. Not even Companions had access to the highly encrypted, impossible to eavesdrop on communication systems of the Alliance. More, she was on Persephone, an Alliance core world. While neither of them was interesting enough to keep under full time surveillance, it wasn't very long odds that this communication was being monitored.

"Considering the research work the Alliance has been doing," he said slowly, putting his thoughts together, "there must be quite a few of those tools out there."

"The context my client gave is that this tool was no longer owned by the government. It's outside of their purview just now, and his associate is going to great lengths to attain it, especially considering what it could do for his business." Inara's expression was grave.

"No idea who this business man is?"

"None," she replied. "Only that he operates between the border and the center worlds."

"That's half the population of the Alliance," Mal answered, chewing on his lip. "All right, Inara. I take your meaning. Thanks for the heads up. If I learn anything from this end, I'll keep you posted."

"Please do," and she signed off without further ado.

"Simon," Mal called, poking his head into sickbay, "how's River doing these days."

As always, Simon paused a moment before answering, trying to shuffle the exacting terminology of his profession into terms a layman could understand. As always, the process meant that he couldn't communicate exactly specific details, the details that meant the difference between an accurate prognosis and a sloppily painted picture.

"She's more stable than she's been in a while. I think I've found a balance to her meds, so she's having fewer side effects."

"Is she any more in touch with reality?" Mal asked, a little impatiently.

"The problem, captain," Simon replied a little stiffly, "is that she's a little too much in touch with reality. You and I can focus on one thing at a time, screening the rest of the verse out as we need to. River experiences everything, all the time. I think the only thing that's spared her from going completely catatonic is that her intellect can usually keep up with all of it – even if she's not always able to articulate what she's experienced."

"Tell me about it," Mal said, thinking back to what Kaylee had told him of Trojans and boxes that didn't like him. "Here's the problem: I've gotten word that someone may be working on grabbing River and using her…unique perspective, let's say."

"That can't happen," Simon protested. "She's barely able to function with the support we can give her. She loves Serenity. It's the main reason she's doing so well."

"I don't intend to let it happen. That's the reason I'm telling you now. Stay on your guard. Keep River as close as possible, until we get a handle on what's going on."

"Yes, sir."

Mal left the sickbay, deeply discontented.

"So," Mal said, peering into the wiring he'd uncovered by removing a service panel, "what drew you into whoring? The benefits? The travel? Having sex with strange men?"

Inara refused to rise to his bait. "I don't whore," she answered in an even, friendly tone. "I'm a Companion."

"You companionate?"

She closed her eyes briefly, as though his grammar caused her some internal pain. "I accompany, and I choose those whom I accompany, not the other way around."

"Right," he agreed. "That makes all the difference in the world."

"It does."

"Because every man that's ever contemplated going to a whore – excuse me, Companion – has the greatest respect for her and would never even think of treating her like a piece of meat he's bought for the night."

The look she turned on him was a combination of mild contempt, disinterest, and boredom, as though she saw a particularly poorly trained dancing bear had piddled on the floor. "Strangely enough, Malcolm, aside from the one man you ended up punching to defend my honor, you're the only man who's treated me with disrespect for what I am."

"Inara!"

The reprove in her instructor's tone was the equivalent of a slap in the face from one of her childhood teachers. Her instructor stopped in front of her, peered into her face with laser accurate attention, then picked up Inara's left hand and inspected the cuticles. She had doctored away the tear streaks on her face and put ice bags over her eyes to reduce the swelling, but there were still telltale signs of crying. She hadn't even thought to look after her cuticles. It never occurred to her that she still had the habit of chewing on whatever loose skin her nails my have. As a result, three of her cuticles were pink and swollen.

"You are in no wise ready for instruction today," the instructor said, the smallest note of harshness like a lash.

"Yes, ma'am."

It would do no good at all to beg forgiveness or explain why she'd been crying that morning. A Companion would never let such trivialities affect her comportment. A Companion was always ready, always in control, always serene and smiling gently. Missing a day because she was unable to meet those standards was a black mark on her record. Two more like it, and she would be removed from the Academy's program. That could not happen.

"It's just as well now as later," the instructor said with a sigh and gentle tilt of her head. "That way, you can learn to maintain yourself before the pressures on you increase even more. You're excused for the day, Inara. We will see you tomorrow morning."

Inara curtsied deeply, though the instructor had already turned away from her. Then she floated to the door and let herself out, determined to show with the tiniest motions that she was composed, dignified, and ungrieved by the events of the day.

The wiring system was not a weak point, Mal decided. It hardly surprised him, seeing that he was able to access it from the inside. Either the systems were single, and the slightest tweak could cause them to fail – leaving them in a dark, increasingly cold and stuffy tomb – or they had triple and quadruple redundancies, meaning that any change he made would be overridden.

"I don't disrespect what you are," he corrected Inara and handed her the coin he'd used to pry the panel off the wall. "I disrespect what you do, because it disrespects you."

He pulled himself out of the wall and sat up on the floor, extremely dissatisfied.

"Really?" Inara asked. "Or is it that, like many men, you cannot stand being unable to control your desires or the object of your desire, and because of that, you've decided to convince yourself that what you desire is no good? Foxes aren't the only creatures that suffer from sour grapes."

"You've a pretty low opinion of men," Mal replied, trying to decide how many panels he could pull off before the security system kicked in or time ran out.

"As do you of Companions and whores," Inara answered.

"Kaylee, what've you got?" Zoe called out.

"It don't make no sense!" Kaylee yelled back. "That's what I got. Ain't no reason for the hydrospanner to give out like it did, but it has, an' I definitely don't like the looks of the backup."

Zoe stepped through the hatch to the engine room and ducked down to where Kaylee had crawled under the engine. Kaylee pushed herself back out, her hair a cloud of worry, and two greasy parts clenched in her left fist.

"Look," she said, holding up the first one. "Feel that spot there?"

Zoe laid a finger on it and felt a subtle roughness where it should have been smoothed to a mirror polish.

"That there's metal fatigue. Fatigue that wasn't there two weeks ago when I last stripped down that module. It's got maybe another three day's heavy use before it goes, and it better not be in when it goes, because if it does, it'll take half the engine chassis out with it."

Zoe's jaw clenched and her lips tightened. "What about the backup?"

That was the second part Kaylee held up. "It should be good. I inspected it those two weeks ago when I worked on this module, but it's not good."

"How so?"

Kaylee pulled out another part, a micrometer wrench, and measured one point and then another of the second hydrospanner. "Its tolerances are off. Just by a percent or so, but it's enough. I put this here part in, and the next time the captain calls for a full burn, it'll either freeze up the entire engine or fly apart into a bajillion pieces and take out half the crew."

Zoe studied Kaylee's unhappy face. If Kaylee said she'd inspected the parts and found them good two weeks ago, then two weeks ago, the parts were good. They were just lucky she'd spotted this problem before it sent critical. How did the parts go from fine to bad in that space of time? She didn't like it. Not one bit.

"Three days on the first one?" she asked Kaylee.

"Three days, if I get to take the engine offline every few hours and inspect the part."

"Okay, I'll tell the captain."

The captain had been none too pleased. It didn't help that on her way down to the bridge, Zoe had come across River, lying sprawled out on the deck and patiently counting the minute ridges of texture the prevented slips and falls when people ran back and forth. She looked up at Zoe, and said, "the boxes are arguing now. It's not orange, not at all. It's purple. Tell the captain I said so."

"Whatever you say, kiddo," Zoe answered.

"We'll have to stop at B'gard's," Mal decided, looking over charts with Wash. "That'll give Kaylee a chance to find replacement parts or remachine what we've got on hand. We might even get a chance to take on new cargo for Elysium."

Zoe's expression changed a tiny bit. "What about what we've already got?"

"What about it?"

"We still never opened up Morado's crates like you said we should. What if there's something in there we should know about."

"Kaylee come up with something to get by those electronic signature locks?"

"She was still working on it when she said Serenity called her attention to the hydrospanners."

"Soon as she's got that squared away to her satisfaction, tell her to get back on those locks. [This stinks like weekold hagfish, and I don't like it.]"

"Yes, sir."

"Wiring's a complete [motherless toad humper]," Mal said, sitting back on the bed. There were floor, wall, and ceiling panels piled all around them. Inara had watched him quietly, helping out where she could by staying out of his way or finding him things he asked for. "The only systems I can touch are the ones we absolutely cannot risk fiddling with. Morado's one sadistic customer."

"What about that?" Inara asked, pointing to the vid screen.

"What about it? Doubt we get the feelies broadcast all the way out here," he answered.

"No, that's not what I mean. If it's here for any reason, it's here to pick up something broadcast at us. Maybe Morado's final message where he tells us exactly what his plan is before he kills us by feeding us to piranha."

"No piranha," Mal answered. "And it'd be tons easier to kill us by letting the air out, turning off the heat, or just plain old starvation."

"But that's still here," she pointed out.

"And?"

"Is the equipment necessary to receive a broadcast of some sort all that different from what you need to send a broadcast?"

He sat for a moment longer, taking that into account, then sighed the heavy sigh of one whose work is not even close to being done and stood up again. "You know for a whore, you're awfully clever."

"Well, one of us has to be, and I'm not a whore."


	3. Part 3

**Chapter Three**

B'gard, listed as Beauregard on the charts and affectionately called Buggered by its inhabitants, was wet, crowded, and smelly. For a border world, it was heavily populated, but the majority of the people crawling on that particular rock were transient, to say the least. It was no hard task to find a junkyard with Firefly parts, but it did take Kaylee some time to find two hydrospanners that satisfied her persnickety standards.

"Done, mei-mei?" Mal asked.

"Just about, captain. Say, I don't suppose we could get-"

"No, we can't. Not enough time," he answered.

She pouted for only a moment but then returned to her cheerful, arm swinging walk as they headed up to the counter.

"Zoe, give me a status," he said into his comm unit.

"Weirdness, captain, bad weirdness," Zoe answered. Mal felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle with heat. "We finally got Morado's crates open with the encrypt-cracker Kaylee left us. Nothing in the box but a handful of circuit chips, and River put her hands over her ears and ran out of the cargo bay yelling the whole way. Jayne, Simon, and the preacher are after her now."

"Wait a minute," he stopped dead in his tracks, "are you telling me that she's off the ship?"

"Yes, sir, no one's happy about it at all."

"[Liver sucking hell!]" he swore. "Find her, get her back on board, lock down the ship, and seal those gorram chips in a shielded canister. C'mon, mei mei. We just got handed one hellacious hurry up."

The video-communication unit was a frustrating dead end. It didn't receive broadcasts of any sort. It was only provided so the occupant of the module could watch feelies from the limited library. "Hot Independence Ladies in Action" was probably the most critically acclaimed title of the bunch. It took him several hours of minute dissection to determine that none of the components were capable of reverse engineering to get a signal broadcast back into space. 

"Startin' to think that this Morado has got one twisted sense of humor," Mal stated, sitting on the floor with his back up against the bed. While he'd been working, Inara had restored most of the panels to their rightful places. He couldn't help but wonder what kind of compulsive Companion training was behind that.

"It does seem like he enjoys those little pointed jokes of his," she agreed. She sat on the bed just a few inches away from him, enough for the following silence to become companionable, not awkward. 

"You never did answer my question."

"Which question was that?" she asked in return, looking down at him, her eyes peaceful and serene.

"Why did you become a Companion? What drew you to it?"

It was a question she inevitably heard from every client she serviced, every friend she made, every acquaintance who gave in to curiosity, but the poetically phrased answer that usually fell off her lips failed. She looked down at her hands and spotted a cuticle she'd been picking at absentmindedly. With the slightest, tired smile, she smoothed the irritated skin above her nail back down and trained her thoughts away from it.

"Inara?" It was unlike her to be caught without a ready answer, and even then, the pause was always artful and pregnant, not hesitant as now.

"Do you know how young a girl is when she's accepted into the Academy's Companion program?"

"Not a clue. Young, I suppose," he answered.

"I was thirteen, and considered a little long in the tooth. My instructors worried that I'd never be able to control myself well enough to realize my potential. It's common, you understand, for nearly half of the girls accepted into the program to be sent home the first year. Half of the remaining leave in the next five years. By the time we graduate, less than one of ten have completed the program."

"A tough row to hoe," he commented.

"But never too tough. I always wanted it more than I wanted to get away with temper tantrums or selfishness or spiteful tricks. I wanted the perfection, the control, the power within myself."

"Guess I don't quite understand why it took becoming a - … what you are to accomplish that," Mal shrugged.

"You grew up on an independent border world, Mal," she answered. "Within certain economic constraints, you had the freedom to be whatever you wanted."

"What I wanted was to be left the hell alone by the Alliance. Didn't exactly work out that way."

"In the center worlds, it's different. There are only a few occupations open to women of my standing that can accrue any wealth, and fewer even then that garner recognition, acceptance, and respect. Besides, becoming a Companion, the world of Companions . . . it was clean, always composed, as close to perfect as a person can be. There was no ugliness in it."

He glanced at her to see if there was any hint of prevarication, but the calm acceptance in her eyes told him she really believed what she said.

She was picking nervously at her fingernails again, caught herself, and immediately schooled herself against it. It was her nerves, of course. The documentation in front of her was not lying, not when she'd delved it out of the third most deeply encrypted level of the Guild's database stores, not when her Guild superiors had no idea that her questioning had gone beyond the easily satisfied curiosity of a freshly fledged novitiate. She assumed she would have been told when she became the priestess of House Madrassa, but that was at least ten years away, and in that time, who knew what political machinations would have taken place and how she would have been compromised.

What to do? She had no close friends. There was no friendship in the Guild; it was subtly discouraged as something outside the careful control Companions practiced their entire careers. She mentally reviewed the list of clients she had acquired after only a few short months of work. There was not one she would trust with this information. Each of them had become a person of sufficient wealth and power to attract a Companion, and none of them had done it by playing nicely or idealistically in their worlds. She couldn't just stand by, though. Something had to be done.

It occurred to her that she'd been wrong when she'd said she'd do anything to be a Companion. As much as she loved the world she'd entered – the beauty, the culture, the serene knowledge of being one of the best at what she did – it was not worth being silent over this matter. The very heart of who she was, of what made her a Companion, also made it impossible not to risk her vocation over this.

Drawing up her own account information on her vid screen, she began laying the groundwork she would need.

"Inara," her old instructor smiled in genuine welcome. "It's a pleasure to see you again. Please, come in and make yourself comfortable. Tea?"

"No, thank you, Director," she responded. "It's an unfortunate necessity, but I'm here on business, not pleasure."

"Oh?" The older woman paused a moment, as though running through possible business matters an old student might bring to her. It was almost, but not quite, a gaffe in the carefully constructed etiquette of their world. Anything short of a life and death matter could certainly have waited for the pleasantries of a tea ceremony.

Inara took a seat on the low divan, composing herself. There would be no threat of violence, but if she didn't play her hand just right, that violence would find her with no warning and even less mercy.

"You've been the Director of Procurement for the Guild for, what, five years now?" Inara asked her former instructor.

"Yes, almost six. It was difficult leaving the Academy, but being offered the position was an honor I could scarcely refuse."

"I certainly appreciated your recommended placement after my graduation."

"Please, Inara, think nothing of it. I never knew a student more devoted to the Art as you were and are."

"Thank you. I hope, though, that you understand it is not idle curiosity which brings me to ask what becomes of the girls that are dropped from the Academy?"

There was the slightest pause in the older woman's response. "I'm sure you know as well as I do. Do you still communicate with Nandee?"

"Nandee quit of her own accord, after she graduated from the Academy and was placed with a house. I'm speaking of the girls who never make it to graduation. Particularly, the girls who leave during the last year or two of instruction."

There. Her suspicions were valid. The Director had blinked twice in quick succession. It was as telling as an affronted gasp.

"Why, I couldn't tell you the fate of each individual girl. Most of them return home, I imagine. A few become whores, as they can parlay their skills into higher pay than most. A very few foolish individuals try to pass themselves off as Companions, though the Guild puts a stop to that very quickly. I suppose there are some who transfer to a different Academy program. The Companion program, as you well know, is the most difficult in the Academy. Any girl who's made it within a year or two of graduation would surely be welcomed into another program."

She was lying. More, she was nervous. In the Academy, girls had whispered about their teacher's almost supernatural proficiency at reading people, judging their internal thoughts and reactions by the smallest of tells – flicks and twitches, pauses and stammering, stillness and motion. Inara, though, had been accredited with just as much skill by the time she'd graduated, and she'd had reason to practice since then.

"Then," Inara began, taking a memchip from her sleeve, "you'd know nothing about the girls who were delivered into the hands of black market slavers, and sold as whores to individuals willing to pay a steep price for a Companion-trained girl no longer under the protection of the Guild?"

The other woman watched the memchip warily. "I've no idea what you're talking about, Inara."

"No? Not the names of five hundred different girls over the last five years and three months? It must have taken you nearly nine months to put together all the contacts you'd need as well as bribe Alliance officials to look the other way."

There was a pause of nearly ten seconds, as the Director clearly reshuffled information in her mind. Inara, she knew, was not the type to bluff. Therefore, she had found hard evidence somewhere.

"What do you want?"

"Want?" Inara asked, raising a perfect eyebrow.

"You can be the priestess of your house, though it will take nearly a year to set it up. Or would you prefer an appointment higher up in the Guild? An exclusive contract with an Alliance executive? Certainly you can't desire money."

For the first time in many a long year, Inara felt her temper near to unraveling.

"What I want is justice, but there's no way I'll see you marooned on an unTerraformed moon, waiting for your air to run out. What I'll settle for is an end to your unofficial "procurement" and the recovery of the girls you sold into slavery."

"That will never happen, Inara."

"Oh, but it will," she responded. She held the memchip up. "This contains a copy of every record of your … transactions. Your retina scan and your signature make them inescapably your work. There are copies like this chip scattered in different locations throughout the core worlds and even a few of the border worlds. There is also a tracer program wormed into the Guild records – which put me back a pretty penny. One more transaction, Director, and these copies will be released to nearly a hundred different agencies. You have five years in which to track and recover all the girls you betrayed. Each of those girls will report their return to me via the contact on this chip. If, by the last day of your term, you have failed – if any of the girls are dead or unable to respond to me – then the information in your files will be released to those agencies. Should anything drastic befall me, the information will be released."

The director's hands had curled into white knuckled fists. "You have no idea what you are throwing away, Inara."

"Oh, believe me, I do. But I'd rather see the Guild dismantled, torn down, and the ground on which it stood sown with salt before I see this continue."

Inara stood, her skirts and sleeves falling about her in graceful lines. "Some might say the task I've set you is impossible, but you are a Companion, as am I, and I learned from you that a Companion can accomplish anything she puts her mind to."

The Director stood as well, regal and white with fury. "You'll regret your actions, child."

"No. I regret the necessity of them, but not the actions themselves. Good day, Director."

She gave her deepest curtsy, letting her hair and sleeves sweep the floor. Then she floated to the door, buoyed by the serenity she'd fought for so long to master.

At the foyer of the Guildhall, she hailed a personal transport.

"The spaceport, please," she asked, once she was settled in to her seat.

There was no way she could remain on the Guild's homeworld. There was no way she could remain on a core world at all. The Director would waste little time in finding the trace – though there were actually seven of them, each inserted a little more insidiously than the last – and even less time in testing whether Inara's death would release the files or not. It was best that she remove herself from imminent danger. Indeed, it was best if she stayed out of the Guild's way as much as possible until this was finished, one way or another.

The Director would never forgive her. There were few more powerful people she could have as an enemy within the Guild. Sighing, she checked her chronometer. Her belongings were either sold or packed, bonded, and already stowed on the ship that would take her to Persephone. From there, she could certainly find some vessel she could make arrangements with – perhaps a cruise vessel that would appreciate a full time Companion on board. There would be something so that she could support herself and stay as far away from the Guildhall as possible.

"Zoe," Mal yelled, storming back into Serenity, "where is she?"

"We don't know yet, Captain," she replied, hurried but unfazed by his temper.

"Have you heard from the others?" Kaylee asked, crowding in after him.

"Jayne and Book are quartering the marketplace. Simon took off on his own, thinking he could figure out just where she went. They've all got communicators and instructions to check back in every five minutes."

"We've got to find her," Kaylee said, aghast. "Buggered's no place for her to be runnin' around on a regular day, and with this guy Inara said's after her-"

"We know, mei mei," Mal answered curtly. "Zoe, what have you got on those gorram chips?"

"Wash took a look at them, but can't figure out what the heck they are. Maybe Kaylee might."

"Get up there, mei mei, and give me a report on the communicator as soon as you can. Zoe, hold down the fort. I'm joining the search party."

The streets of Buggered lacked paving and any concession to public health. Raw sewage trickled or gushed down gutters or even in the middle of the street. River was aware of it, but had more pressing matters on her mind.

Typhus, typhoid fever, malaria, part of her mind sang out as she dashed down one alleyway into another. Plague, ebola, Keller's Bleed, mumps, measles, whooping cough, hepatitis A though M… she calculated disease vectors, the apparent lack of immunization for most of the citizens, and plotted out in her mind a feasible way to wipe out 97% of the population of the planet, in case anyone should ask her how it might be accomplished.

The screaming was still in her ears. What she had thought was arguing had really been stifled, suffocated screaming. As soon as the crates were open, it spewed all over her, chased her out of the ship, clawed her ears and her mind.

"It's purple!" she yelled, and the only one who noticed was the rat eating rotten cabbage. "I told them, and I used words, but they didn't understand."

The rain picked up, and her feet smarted from running. Aware that something had changed, she very slowly took her hands down from her ears. The screaming. It hadn't quite stopped, but it was so quiet she could barely hear it anymore. Still panicky, she leaned against a brick wall and peered out at the crowd beyond the end of the alley, twenty yards away.

"Simon?"

"What'd ya think?" Wash asked, glancing over her shoulder.

Kaylee tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I think I'm gonna feed whoever put these chips on my ship into Serenity's starboard engine."

"Fair enough. It'll balance out the one Cap fed the portside engine. Other than that though?"

"They're made for broadcasting," Kaylee frowned. "But it don't make no sense, the bandwidth they're on. And it's sending out trash. Just junk. Noisy junk at that. If it were audible, we'd all have size 10 headaches from it. A'course, it's not audible."

"Maybe not unless you're River," Wash peered at the chip Kaylee held in the grip of her favorite pair of needle noses.

"Huh?"

"Crates' opened, River clapped her hands over her ears and started yellin' big time. I don't know about you, but I'm guessing our customer didn't just ship these on Serenity because we've got the best prices in the verse."

"Oh, criminy," Kaylee breathed. "And the hydrospanners, too. You'd best call the captain and tell him what's what."


	4. Part 4

**Chapter Four**

"This is not good," Mal finally conceded, taking a seat beside Inara.

"I didn't think so," she agreed. "I suspect Morado had us figured from the start. After all, he was the client who told me about the plan to take River. He must have known we were connected. If he was able to put all those things together – including River's whereabouts when even the Alliance hasn't been able to pin her down – well, it makes me worry that Serenity's in a lot more danger, and from more than just him."

"Seems to have gotten a lot on his own."

"Maybe it wasn't on his own," she replied, looking up at the ceiling.

"Now, look, I know Jayne doesn't come off as the mo-"

"Not him, Mal, though I must admit I had my doubts. No, me. You're not the only person in this verse that's had occasion to make someone want to kill you."

"Kill you? You know, some of your clients never did strike me as bein' awfully clever. There's plenty other activities I can imagine that'd be a great deal pleasanter."

"Flatterer."

"Ain't you gonna tell me about this enemy of yours? Nandee told me about a Dulcimer she killed. Yours must be even better."

"Probably not."

"Well, tell it to me anyways while I screw around with the docking mechanism. Might be able to buy us a couple of minutes' time that way."

Simon stopped at the corner of the square. Predicting River's behavior was nothing short of miraculous, but he did have an idea of what would draw her, once and if she got past the shock of whatever drove her out of Serenity. She liked people – if they were in a good mood. She liked music, dancing, and celebration. If she really could read people's minds, the party going on here, an annual festival of something involving one of the few plants that could be grown and harvested on Buggered, would draw her.

His eyes scanned the crowd for several minutes, ignoring bumps and jostles from the people around him. There. 

Simon's message crackled over the communicator. "I've found her. Meet me at the Timuron Square, the southwest corner."

"Finally," Jayne muttered, taking off for that direction. Book and Mal heard and came as well.

"Two by two, hands of blue," River sang softly to herself. They liked to hunt, and while it wasn't them, the same kind of chase was on. It might be enough to use the crowd as camouflage, but she couldn't count on it.

She reeled as her mind automatically came up with fifteen different conceptions of camouflage. Predators in tall grass and a purloined letter danced along with the people around her. If a violent demonstration took place in this square, the correct placement of tactical snipers would be one behind the chimney of the third building on the north side, a second placed in the oleander bush beside the comestibles store, and a third just behind the bar of the tavern on the southern side. There were twenty three possible immediate exits from the square, and another fifteen that would work given extra time, a set of encryption cutters, or a crowbar. The fat man in a red shirt, laughing at his neighbor's joke, didn't want to go home tonight to an empty house. The skinny brunette two people over was planning to seduce him. It was nice the way things worked out. The crocuses planted on the eastern side of the square were wilting because of too much rain. That, and the soil was acidic.

"River!"

Simon had reached her side. He had an extra jacket with him that he pulled over her. 

"The others will be here soon. Come on."

He took her by the arms and guided her out of the crowd just as Book ran up.

"She's all right?"

"I think so. I want to get her back to the ship as soon as possible."

Jayne and Mal joined them.

"Let's go," Mal jerked his head. "Jayne, take point. Book, you and I are flanking. Simon, do you have a weapon?"

Simon looked over from River. "No. No…I wouldn't know-"

"It's okay. Let's just move."

They took it at a dog trot, the quickest Simon could get River to move. She kept trying to pull away, wanting to look at something or veer off from something else. He could never tell what stimulus would attract or repel her.

Serenity sat at the end of the landing sites one hundred yards away, Zoe on watch with a business-like shotgun in her hands. River stopped again, looking around her like a cat chasing a dust mote. 

"Gorram that Morado anyway," Mal swore.

Simon almost fell over. "Who?"

"Morado, guy who paid us for the cargo that scared your sister off."

"Mora- Why didn't you tell me this before?" Simon gaped. 

"Why on earth would that matter?"

"Because Morado is another word for purple in a language from Earth-that-was," Simon answered. "River's been-"

The barrel of a gun pointed at him interrupted his answer. River screamed at the top of her lungs. Her reaction gave Simon the chance to move, swatting the gun away and then hitting the owner in the nose with his fist. Someone else's fist hit him just above his ear, hammering him down to the ground.

"MOVE!" Mal yelled. "Zoe, I need backup!"

Two hands dragged Simon back up to his feet. Shots were being fired, but all he did was twist, trying to put his eyes on River. Mal had her by the waist and was brooking no hesitation on her part.

"C'mon, doc," Jayne growled. "I ain't draggin' you the whole way. You're takin' my attention away from Vera."

"Move it, Captain!" Book shouted.

Putting his feet under him seemed like an impossible task, but he managed to keep them moving along even though his vision doubled and greyed at the edges. There was a sudden increase in the firing and a lot more yelling than before.

"Hit the girl, and you'd better save the last bullet for yourself!" Someone roared.

Zoe was there, shotgun in hand, pumping out round after round. Hands took him from Book and Jayne. Kaylee. 

"River."

"Hang on, Simon. You're bleedin'."

Zoe's shotgun kept firing. There was even more yelling.

"Go, Zoe! Just go!"

"Captain!"

"That's an order!"

He pulled away from Kaylee and forced his eyes to focus past the ramp into the cargo bay. The tableau lasted a fraction of a second, but burned into his eyes. Jayne stood at the end of the ramp, two men dead or dying at his feet. Zoe took aim at the crowd of men half encircling the captain. Mal was holding an unconscious River in his arms. He kicked the closest man in the groin, turned and threw River at Book, and without a backward glance rushed back into the fray.

The ramp closed. Jayne stumbled back, looking like he might kick the ramp back down again just to get back to the fight. There was a moment of total silence.

"Zoe, we've got some kind of an armed merchant cruiser heading in, Perseus class. They're locked and loaded."

"Get us out of here, Wash," she answered in a steady voice.

"The captain!" Simon gasped.

No one would meet his eyes.

"Hold still, doc," Kaylee finally said, putting a wadded up cloth to his forehead. "You're bleedin' pretty bad. Don't expect you saw the knife when that guy hit you."

"How long do we have, Mal?" Inara asked.

"Oh, I'd say two days at the most. I can't imagine Morado just handing you or me back if he gets his hands on River. He's only keeping us around until the matter's decided."

The coupling had been the only place where he'd met with any success, and even that was limited. With the mechanism's governor circuit scrambled, it would take a good engineer a couple of minutes to override it. That might just give them enough time to think of a clever quip or hide behind the one potted plant in the room.

"Stop that," he said.

Surprised, she looked up.

"Your fingers. You'll be tearing holes in them next."

"I thought I'd broken that habit," she replied ruefully. "It seems not."

"Lotta habits do that."

She nodded.

"You ever going to quit being a Companion?"

Were she in a room full of Companions, they would have laughed at her for how easily her composure dissolved around this man.

"That's a rather moot question, don't you think?" she asked back. "In two days' time, it will be decided for me."

"Not a moot question to me. There are some things a Companion can't do while she's a Companion. There are some things that some men wouldn't consider doing with a Companion."

"You mean a whore."

"I mean a Companion. Most whores I've ever met dream of the day they can afford to reform."

She stood and started pacing the small space. "You. You take the things I tell you and turn them into knives to cut me. Why should I ever stop being a Companion when it keeps me safe from the likes of you?"

Her voice rose until she almost shouted the last word and Mal was on his feet as well.

"You've never been in danger from the likes of me, 'Nara, 'less you count someone seein' you as you really are as a danger."

"I am a Companion," she yelled back at him. "That is what I am. I can no more change that, than you can change being captain of Serenity."

"Always perfect, always controlled, always serene!" he shouted.

"YES, DAMN YOU!"

He kissed her. Took her by the shoulders, pulled her up to him, and laid his mouth on hers fully expecting that he would lose a limb or some other vital appendage after the surprise wore off. He did not expect her to kiss him back. He did not expect her arms to twine about his neck and pull him closer or for her lips to open to his, deepening the kiss until he thought he might just fall in, never to be seen again. His arms went around her, and he held her tightly against him. The kiss changed from violent anger to need in the span of a few seconds. He was aware that as their lips met again and again, they breathed tiny noises and words.

"Shhh, it's all right. I've got you."

"Mal."

Her body began to arch against him, and the smell of her, warm and fragrant, about turned his mind to thick soup. Again, with deep need, she met his kiss. Her nails began to dig into the skin of his back and neck, through his shirt. She was moaning so softly he couldn't hear it, only feel the vibration of her voice against his lips. And then, a shudder passed through her, and her nails dug in until he barely stopped a surprised cry of pain. She went limp, as though only his hands were holding her up, and her head fell back from his just a bit.

"Inara," he breathed. "Did you just…"

She sighed.

Before he could frame the smallest question, a tremor shook the capsule. Inara's eyes opened.

"That wasn't me," she whispered.

"I know it. Someone's docking with us."

"But-"

"He must have gotten ahold of River."

Mal carefully let go of Inara, letting her get her feet back under her before he released her completely. The airlock door gave a couple of half-hearted "k-chunks" as whoever was on the other side discovered the problem he'd set them up with. They had a minute, perhaps two.

"Get behind me, Inara." He turned, pushing her back.

"I can fight," she answered in a tight voice.

"I know you can, but I go first."

A quick scan of the room gave him the same information as the previous fifty searches. Nothing there made a decent weapon, and there was no real cover. The door stirred again, a second time, and then irised open. He tensed for whatever might come through.

"Captain?" A cheerful head of tousled hair peeked out.

"KAYLEE?"

"You're hurt," Kaylee noticed as he, Inara, and the crew met up in the cargo bay. Zoe looked over to check on him, but Jayne stayed preoccupied with Vera. 

"What?"

"The back of your neck. There's spots of blood," she pointed out.

"Oh, that. It's no-" he stopped, and his eyes caught Inara's. Nothing in the verse could persuade him to say the scratches she'd left on him were nothing. "It's not anything that'll scar. Simon, how're you?"

Aside from the bandage wrapped around his skull and a certain wan paleness, Simon looked fine, but didn't act it. He only nodded curtly at Mal. River stood next to him, fidgeting in the manner of a bored preschooler.

"Maybe someone'd better give me a run down of what happened after Morado showed up," Mal suggested quietly.

"Skulls have joints other than the jawbone," River replied. "Only they fuse by the time a person grows to adulthood. Pathologists can identify how old a person was when they died by how complete the fusion is."

Simon's jaw muscle flickered in and out with tension.

"Right. How 'bout someone other than River?"

"The thing of it is, Captain," Book began, "River was the one who figured out where Morado was holding you and Inara."

"How'd she do that?"

"By setting up a rendezvous with him under the guise of giving herself up. She got him alone for a couple of minutes," Zoe explained, "and then-"

"She tortured him," Simon spat out. 

"We don't know that," Kaylee objected. "We were outside just like everyone else."

"How else would you explain the screams? What was left of him when we finally went in?" Simon demanded.

"The guards ran in," Zoe continued, "and she shot each one as soon as their head popped through the door. With Morado's weapon."

River had crouched down on the cargo bay and begun drawing designs on it with her fingertip. As far as he could tell by watching her movements, the designs started with a happy face and became more complex.

"Remember what she was like when Jubal showed up?" Kaylee asked, a twist of shadow passing over her face from her own memories of the encounter. "She woke up from the hit she took, and it was like that. She told everyone exactly what they needed to do, what to say, where to go. When we got into the room she'd met Morado in, she'd already written down the coordinates of this little module he'd stuck you two in. Soon as Wash'd plotted the course, she just kind of…faded back to where she usually is."

"Morado?" Mal asked, wondering just how much stranger things might get.

"Catatonic," Simon answered. "Not a mark on him, but he was in a complete fugue state and wouldn't respond to any external stimuli. I can only assume that my sister did something to him. I couldn't say what."

Inara knelt beside River and touched her on the shoulder.

"You cannot say, or guess," River said, looking up at her, "for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water."

"What. Was. That." Mal asked.

"T. S. Eliot," Book replied.

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust," River continued, then got to her feet and wandered off.

"I gotta get off this gorram ship," Jayne muttered.

"We've set course for Persephone," Mal announced as he sat down at the dinner table where Inara reposed. "Should be there in five days or so."

"I hope this adventure hasn't made things too difficult for you, financially that is."

"Us? Nah, we made a relative killing off of it. The upfront payment Morado put down, plus Kaylee knows a guy willing to take those chips off our hands. Then we also have the exact coordinates of that little vacation spot you and I were holed up in. I figure we ought to be able to clear a stack off just that, since Morado won't be lookin' at using it anymore."

"About that, Mal," Inara replied. "I don't want you to think that what happened –"

"You keep pickin' at that, it'll never heal."

She looked down at her hands and realized that three of her cuticles were ready to bleed. She put her hands in her lap and met Mal's eyes, flinching a little at the intensity of that gaze. "What I need you to understand, Mal, is that, regardless of what happened on that little tub, you have not been and will never be a client of mine."

His expression slowly changed into a wide smile. "Inara, honey, I wouldn't have it any other way."

He pressed his palms to the table, stood, and walked over to the kitchen. "Want some coffee? Or actually what tries unsuccessfully to pass for it on this ship?"

**The End.**


End file.
